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The same text appears in the diary as well.
In the morning I read this and that and packed for the Italian trip. Antti kindly borrowed me his snowboard. Probably the Italian Alps is not the wisest place in the world to try snowboard for the first time. Jarkko was supposed to cut my hair, but he is lost somewhere.
![[Our car]](../pictures/fiat.png)
After four we fetched the car. It couldn't be any better, a brand new Fiat Ducato minibus seating nine. We said goodbye to Sarah, Rebecca and Nakki at Martos. We picked Juho, Anssi and his sister Essi from Anssi's place. We're going to drive through Austria on motorway, and we should be in Bormio early tomorrow morning. We left Budapest at half past six.
In Győr we had dinner in the most tasteless restaurant I've ever seen. Featuring: Gypsy violin player, pink table clothes and kitch decoration, and the waitress wore basketball shoes with the normal black and white dress. The others were pretty nervous about the car and someone had to go out to check that it's there every once in a while.
When we tried to start, the car decided to demonstrate a blackout. The electricity completely disappeared. When we opened the hood, the power came back. And when starting the engine, it went out again. Fortunately it wasn't anything serious. The battery cable was loose and lost contact when the engine was turned on. We fastened it with my MacGyver knife and headed towards west.
On a gas station in Austria Mikko remembered he had forgotten his sleeping bag. Nobody had even told the others that we'll need them. (In Italy those without sleeping bags had to pay 20000 lire for the sheets.) I was the co-driver till about three. Mikko and Anssi had been driving this far and now it was Juho's turn. We were near Innsbruck by then. I slept till morning on the back seat. There's plenty of room: when three sit in front two can lie down and sleep.
In the morning we were a bit lost since our map didn't have all the roads. Mikko asked the way from some girl, and she directed us to a certain pass. In the summer that would have been the right way, but the pass is always closed in winter. We had to turn back and take another route, through the corner of Switzerland. The way lead back to Italy through a long and narrow tunnel and over a high dam.
We drove through Livigno to Valdidentro. We bought the ski passes in German, our only common language. Though the girl spoke even worse German than I.
<asking about prices and hearing there's no student discount>
for (i=1; i++; i < 3.5)
"Ja, ...wir nehmen fünf Karten für sechs Tage."
"Für fünf Tage?"
"Nein nein. Für sechs Tage. Fünf stücken."
}
"Ab heute?"
"Igen! Helvetti. Ja!"
Juho rented skis. They took the student card as a pledge. The lower slopes were closed since there's not enough snow. We took only one run (1 hour) in Valdidentro, and returned to the village on the ski lift. We moved to Bormio.
The red lanes are not the best place to practise snowboarding. My wrists and ass are minced meat. I boarded down with Essi. The lower part of the slopes were closed here also, and we took the cabin down. My phone had low battery and I couldn't call Mikko. Fortunately they arrived in 15 minutes. They had been on the highest peak above the clouds, in 3012 meters.
We picked the key to our apartment in Valdidentro. The agency was in the same hut where we bought the ski passes earlier, but here they knew English and I didn't have to speak. Besides all that we had paid earlier (126Kft), they introduced all kinds of extra fees for 230000 lire. The "hotel" is near a small village called Torripiano Fior d'Alpe. Actually we never visited the village. The apartment has living-, bed- and bathroom, a kitchen corner, loft and balcony. I.e. it's ok. Anssi made food and we all went to bed before nine. My head hurts for too much banging to the ground.
It's windy. In the morning we went to Oga to see that there's nothing to see. The only lift was closed. We took the cabin from Bormio to Bormio 2000. I tried a red ski lane once and moved voluntarily to a children's lane to practise. We had coffee and beer in the bistro in Bormio 2000. I returned to the kids' lane. I'm not falling all the time anymore. The most painful phase is binding the feet on the board, since I must sit on my bruised ass. I've been trying to fall forward today to deal the bruises and pain more evenly.
The last run down was very interesting and exhausting. Mikko and Juho took their own way, and both broke a binding somewhere in a woods. Me, Essi and Anssi came down a closed lane. First there was some deep snow and then somewhat less snow. We had to take a narrow forest path to get to our car. The path was a good two meters wide and it was embanked in a steep slope. Up to the middle of the path everything went fine, but then I fell from the embankment into bushes. My board got wounded.
In the end I was sa exhausted that I fell every twenty meters. There were some steep and snowless sections that I walked down.
In the evening my every muscle ached. Mikko crystallized my appearance calling me Space Junk. We had a beer in the pizzeria downstairs. Slow service.
A gorgeous sunny day. We were snowboarding in Livigno, and I'm beginning to get into it. We managed to run through ca. all the open lanes. After the first run from 2700m we had punch on a terrance. I ran with Essi and Juho down a red lane, and fell less than ten times.
In the first run after a hot chocolate I fell quite badly on my back, and hurt my left wrist. I wasn't going too fast, but not too slowly either. I kept my hand in snow a few minutes, after which Mikko bound it. The other wrist I had bound myself already in the morning. I boarded carefully down to the village and quit for today.
![[Me falling]](../pictures/snow.png)
I tried to change my traveller cheques in a bank, but didn't have my passport with me. The pharmacy was closed so I couldn't buy painkillers. The first aid was so far I didn't bother to walk there.
In the evening we were drinking owl oil, beer and rum at our apartment. For some reason Livigno is a tax-free area and alcohol is cheap. We played 7-11, the clapping game and other drinking games. Playing clapping game might not be the wisest thing to do with a broken wrist. Mikko, Essi and Juho visited Bormio. They got a free lift in both directions from some locals.
At night I had difficulties to sleep as the hand ached in any position.
In the morning I visited the first aid in Bormio to get a splint to my arm. The service was really fast and friendly. In ten minutes the hand was already x-rayed. The thicker of the two forearm bones was broken above the wrist (radius). We had to go to Sondolo to get a cast in the hand. There was no orthopedic in Bormio. The sun was shining and the views were as great as ever.
In the hospital I had to wait about an hour. The nice guy I was talking with said that the doctor is in an operation and will make my cast after that. Anyway, the guy did it himself after a while. He was a janitor or something I guess. The cast is made of real, heavy plaster and not of any modern glass fiber nonsense. I must have it for forty days. [1] Bother. I had to pay with my credit card, since I'm out of cash and don't have an insurance. Fortunately the card had nothing against the payment, though the limit was exceeded about 1000 FIM ago.
We returned to Bormio. We took the cabin to 3000m. The others came down on board and I returned to Bormio 2000 with the cabin. Essi was pissed off. I called to the credit card company to raise my limit, but it can't be done. My card is a student version and the credit limit was at the maximum already.
In the evening we had pizza downstairs. The aperitifs came on the house. We went to see how Santa Caterina looks like. There seems to be only one open skiing slope, so we'll probably go somewhere else tomorrow.
We played cards at home. The teawater didn't boil since someone was turning off the stove all the time.
Since I can't snowboard anymore, I have to rent skis. I was at the ski-rental with Mikko, and the owner of the place had some difficulties to understand which one of us wants to rent skis:
"...you came to return your skis?"
"No no, I want to rent skis."
"He [Mikko] wants to rent skis?"
"No, me."
"But that's Impossible!"
et cetera.
I got the skis and one stick. The guy forgot to adjust the bindings. I finally got my traveller cheques changed.
We skied the day in Livigno on the sunny side of the valley. The highest peak with a lift is in almost 3000 meters. We had hot chocolates and pocket Stroh a couple of times during the day. The tax-free Stroh was 35 FIM/litre. The cast didn't disturb the skiing. One jump I landed on my face, but the snow was soft. We ran down the same red/black lane till it became too dark.
The cast is too hot and my hand is itching. The others are kindly asking every once in a while whether it's itching and explaining how terrible it would feel if it was itching. Fortunately it was neither of the Kujalas to break an arm. Nobody could have tolerated the resulting load of complaining.
We were already skiing in Bormio at ten a.m. Being on the skis is nice but snowboarding was more fun. The sun was high enough to shine on us at noon. We came down a couple of times from 3K. Mikko's Christmas cap with flashing red lights gains attention. We quit at four. The last run down was from 3K to the village: over 1400 meters of descend.
We had traditional Christmas food at home (rice and shrimps). We walked around in Bormio and bought Christmas presents. Drinking at home. Santa came after eleven. We made the puzzle he brought.
In the morning we had some difficulties to get moving, and there wasn't too much breakfast either. We were in Livigno only at noon. Juho tried snowboarding. The first run took over an hour. It was the first cloudy day today. It was windy on the mountains, and in the village it was snowing. It wasn't so nice to ski without glasses.
In the evening we made 3/2 kilos spaghetti and almost finished it all. Mikko was drinking, others weren't interested. I took a walk alone through the nearby village Premadio. It's snowy.
Travelling day. We checked out as early as possible. Half past nine, that is. We planned to fill the tank in Livigno, but the weather was too poor to go that way. (In Livigno the tax-free diesel was 2.20 FIM/litre, in Bormio ca. 5 FIM.) It was snowing heavily. They say there's a real winter storm in central Europe. The snowing continued as long as the Alps continued. There was one tricky pass on the way, but we made it without using the chains. All the time we overtook cars that had stopped to assemble the snow chains, or that desperately tried to slip ahead without them. In the other direction there was an endless queue of cars that was practically not moving at all.
We stopped for pizza at the lake Iseo. The views are as great as on the more famous lake Garda nearby. In Brescia we got on the motorway and began eating kilometers. The clouds (or the pollution?) was so low that the sun appears as a plain yellow disc. Before six we passed Venice. In the end of the motorway one has to pay for it, but we didn't take a ticket in Brescia where we entered the road. The guy wrote down our register number and we paid 15 000 lire.
On the Slovenian border the toll officer was a heavy metal fan: he knew "Suomi Finland Perkele". In Slovenia we drove the motorway to Ljubjana. Fortunately we could pay for it with the Italian liras. After that we ran out of money and had to take smaller roads. Without asking anyone Mikko decided that we'll take the way via Croatia and Zagreb.
On the Croatian border our car and luggage was examined, but apparently nothing interesting was found. In Zagreb our co-pilot Mikko got such critique from the back seat that he quit his job. On the Hungarian border something was not ok, but we got through. Probably the guy was complaining about our car: the official rental time had ended few hours ago. Mikko picked up two guys who were hitchhiking to get home from a disco in the middle of nowhere. We were in Budapest at 4 a.m.
Epilogue:
^
Though the cast was huge, the hand didn't ossify properly. As I got it x-rayed in Finland, it turned out to be all twisted. I was a day in hospital, and they broke the wrist again, adjusted the bones and nailed them in place with two 5 cm steel nails.
The cast and nails were removed in late February. As I write this in mid-April, the hand still hurts and the wrist is stiff. E.g. doing chin-ups is impossible. Not that I miss that too much.
^
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